Yvan
Goll (1891-1950) Born Isaac Lang on March 29, 1891, in Saint-Dié in
the Lorraine region of France, Yvan Goll—poet, editor, and
translator—contributed in multiple ways to the major developments
of modernism in the arts. Notably, his experiences of childhood
and exile were multicultural (German-Jewish and French). His
work reflects his personal struggles and passions, expressing a unique
cultural hybridity inflected by alienation, anguish, and the need
for personal acknowledgement. His collaborators included Herman
Hesse, Hans Arp, Hans Richter, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, and James
Joyce. In October 1924, Goll published the groundbreaking journal Surréalisme. Goll’s
conception of surrealism emphasized verbal constructions, relying
on disparate phrases, and avoided the Freudian play between language
and the unconscious aspects of mental life that are now associated
with surrealist practice as promulgated by Andre Breton. Breton,
vying for poetic ascendancy, attacked Goll’s surrealism in
his first Surrealist manifesto (also in 1924). In 1921, Yvan
married Claire Studer, a young journalist and his most important
collaborator. Love and heartbreak and reunion are the subjects
of Ten Thousand Dawns,
a text important to understanding Traumkraut (Dream
Grass), 1951, a work of paranoid surreality, according to Francis
J. Carmody. Neila, Abendgesang, (Neila,
Evening Song), 1954, was
composed on the poet’s deathbed as he lay suffering from leukemia. “Neila” is
an anagram of “Liane,” both referencing Claire. Neila,
Abendgesang is
perhaps even more frenetic and disjointed than Traumkraut. Both
of these volumes were composed while the poet was in close contact
with Paula Celan, who assisted Goll in translating his French-language
lyric poetry into German. Unfortunately and apparently driven
by her own paranoid insecurities, Claire accused Celan of plagiarizing
from her husband’s last works. Celan, who had donated
blood to Yvan, never recovered from the shock of this malignant slur. It
is my belief that while Neila, Abendgesang is
motivated by heart-felt love for Clair, it also carries tones of
apprehension and anxiety that derive from Goll’s recognition
of Claire’s perhaps disquieting powers. Goll’s
work has been translated into English by Kenneth Rexroth, Galway
Kinnell and William Carlos Williams among many others. Mine
is the only translation of Neila, Abendgesang of
which I am aware. I have also translated poems from Traumkraut that
appeared in the journals Circumference and Calque.